An Institution Reinvents Itself

Published: April 16, 2004

When the Brooklyn Museum laid the cornerstone for its grand Beaux-Arts palace on Dec. 14, 1895, its president predicted a grand future for the museum and the independent city it would grace.

''Our rapid growth in population and wealth makes it not unreasonable to believe that here will rise what in time may become one of the greatest museums of the world, a temple of art and science,'' A. Augustus Healy told the crowd on that cold, windy day.

Things did not go exactly as he hoped. By 1898, Brooklyn had been absorbed into New York City and the museum began to fall under the shadow of its younger, more glamorous sister, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Despite early successes -- it often outbid the Met at art auctions in its first decades -- the Brooklyn Museum watched its fortunes suffer with those of its borough, as the Dodgers left, crime rose and neighborhoods deteriorated.

By the late 1960's, budget problems forced it to close many galleries, including European painting. By the 1990's, attendance had sunk to a low of about 200,000 visitors a year, while the Met was regularly attracting more than 20 times that number.

Now, the Brooklyn Museum is in an aggressive campaign to reinvent itself and narrow the gap with its Manhattan rivals. Over the next decade, it hopes to triple its attendance. To do this, it has decided essentially to forget about Manhattan and concentrate on attracting more visitors from its own, huge, backyard: a borough of 2.5 million residents.